Events, Verisoph

1910 Founding of Degania, the First Kibbutz 0 cit. Pioneers established Degania in 1910, the first kibbutz, a collective farming community. The model became central to Zionist settlement. economy / society ●●

1910 to 1939 Eugenics Record Office opens at Cold Spring Harbor 1 cit. Charles Davenport founded the Eugenics Record Office to collect family data and promote eugenic policy. Its flawed research was used to support sterilization laws and immigration restrictions that harmed thousands. science / society ●●

c. 1910 to c. 1970 Australia removes Aboriginal children for assimilation 0 cit. For much of the twentieth century Australian authorities removed many Aboriginal children from their families to be raised and schooled as white, a group later called the Stolen Generations. Official inquiries documented lasting harm. politics / society ●●

July 1910 Rangers and posses lynch Black Texans during the Slocum massacre 0 cit. A white mob killed an unknown but substantial number of Black residents of Slocum, Texas, over several days; state Rangers were dispatched afterward, ostensibly to restore order, but no one was ever prosecuted for the killings. The Slocum massacre is documented mainly through local records and later scholarly reconstruction, since contemporary official accounts minimized it, and historians treat it as part of a broader pattern in which Rangers were sent after racial violence rather than deployed to prevent it. society ●●

c. 1910 Paternalist rule and the colour bar 0 cit. Belgium ran the Congo as a paternalist state built on a partnership of the colonial administration, the Catholic Church, and large companies. Africans were provided basic schooling and health care aimed at producing obedient workers, but were barred from higher education, political rights, and senior jobs by an informal colour bar. The system kept Congolese people subordinate while presenting itself as benevolent guardianship. politics / society ●●

c. 1910 The Octopus and the enclave economy 0 cit. Across Central America, United Fruit builds a self-contained enclave economy: company land, company railroads, company ports, company telegraph lines, and company towns with their own stores and scrip. Locals called it El Pulpo, "the Octopus," for the reach of its tentacles. Profits flowed north while host nations gained little tax revenue and little control. economy / society ●●●

c. 1910 The Mission Schools and the First Christian Converts 0 cit. Protestant and Catholic missions spread across Kikuyu country in the early 1900s, and their schools offered literacy, Christianity, and a path into clerical and church employment. The athomi, the readers, became the first mission-educated Africans and gained standing and opportunity through their ties to the colonial order. This new Christian, literate group is the seedbed of the progressive African class that later aligned with the government against the oath-bound fighters. culture / religion / society ●●

1910 Isaiah Shembe founds the Nazareth Baptist Church 0 cit. The Zulu prophet Isaiah Shembe founded the Nazareth Baptist Church, one of the largest of the Zionist-type African independent churches. He wove Zulu custom, dance, and dress together with Christian worship, offering a faith that did not require Africans to abandon their culture. Such churches asserted a spiritual independence that quietly rejected the missionaries' claim to define the true religion. culture / religion / society ●●

c. 1910 The Loss of the Kikuyu Lands at Kiambu 6 cit. Along the southern edge of Kikuyu country, near Kiambu and Limuru, settlers took some of the most fertile ridges, land the Kikuyu insisted they had bought or cleared, not abandoned. Officials often argued the ground had been emptied by the famine and smallpox of the 1890s, but the Kikuyu held that it had owners who were still alive. These contested ridges, remembered as stolen land, became the seedbed of Kikuyu grievance and later of Mau Mau. economy / society ●●

c. 1910 The lodge as a networking club of the colonial establishment 0 cit. Freemasonry in colonial Kenya functioned mainly as a network of status and mutual aid among administrators, settlers, and professionals, meeting behind closed doors for ritual and dining. Membership signaled standing in the small European elite and could smooth business and official ties. This was a secular fraternal role, distinct from the missions, whose purpose was evangelism and schooling. The date marks the pattern rather than a single event, so it is approximate. politics / society ●●

c. 1910 Collapse of the Arab-Swahili plantation economy 0 cit. Without enslaved labour, the great coastal plantations that had grown grain, coconuts, and cloves went into steep decline, and the Arab-Swahili landowning class lost its economic base. Estates fell idle or passed to absentee owners while former slaves and Mijikenda cultivators worked them as squatters. The coast's old commercial engine seized up just as the interior was being opened for settler agriculture. economy / society ●●

c. 1910 The lakeside worked as a labour reserve 0 cit. The densely settled lands around Lake Victoria were treated mainly as a reservoir of workers for settler farms and towns, and as fertile ground for mission schools. Men migrated out for wage labour while the region itself saw limited local investment beyond what fed the labour supply. Missionised and drawn on for its people, the lakeside developed in a lopsided way, neither settler core nor neglected margin. economy / society ●●

c. 1910 Dukawalla shopkeepers spread retail trade across the country 0 cit. Indian-run dukas reached nearly every town and rural centre, handling much of the colony's retail trade and the buying of African produce. The dukawalla became the everyday face of Indian settlement across Kenya. This visible role also placed the community between white rulers above and the African majority below, a middleman position that later drew resentment. economy / society ●●

c. 1910 Goan clerks and Sikh artisans staff the colonial economy 0 cit. Goan Catholic clerks filled government and railway offices while Sikh and Gujarati fundis worked as masons, carpenters, mechanics, tailors and fitters. Different communities, including Ismaili, Hindu, Sikh, Goan and Bohra, tended to cluster in distinct trades and keep their own institutions. Together they ran much of the day-to-day machinery of the colony below the European ranks. economy / society ●●

1910 Rotary clubs federate into a national association 0 cit. Sixteen clubs formed the National Association of Rotary Clubs of America and elected Paul Harris its first president. The federation gave the movement a shared structure as new clubs formed across the country. It was renamed the International Association of Rotary Clubs as the movement crossed borders. economy / society ●●

1910 Rotary spreads beyond the United States 0 cit. A club chartered in Winnipeg became the first Rotary Club outside the United States. Clubs in Great Britain and Ireland followed within two years. The rapid international growth pushed the movement to reorganize as an association of clubs in many countries. economy / society ●●

c. 1910 Rotary and Freemasonry share roots but not identity 0 cit. In the early twentieth century Rotary grew alongside the older fraternal orders, and many early members also belonged to Masonic lodges. Both traditions valued fellowship, ethics, and mutual aid among men of standing. Rotary, however, is not a Masonic body: it has no secret ritual or oath, publishes its membership and activities, and centers on open community service rather than initiation. religion / society ●●

1910 The Union of South Africa and the exclusion of Black South Africans 0 cit. Britain unites its colonies and the former republics into the self-governing Union of South Africa in 1910, reconciling with the defeated Boers. The settlement is made between whites, and the black majority is left almost entirely without the vote. The compromise hardens into a system of land and labour control that leads on to formal segregation and, after 1948, apartheid. politics / society ●●●●

c. 1910 Eastern White Highlands become the Kikuyu land crisis 2 cit. The eastern or Central highland edge of the White Highlands, around Kiambu, Limuru, the Aberdares and Mount Kenya, cut into Kikuyu land claims and also tightened pressure on Embu and Meru communities around Mount Kenya. That geography produced the sharpest direct link between lost family land, loyalist advantage, squatter eviction and Mau Mau. It also fed the later smallholder title, coffee and cooperative order in Central Kenya. economy / politics / society ●●●●

1911 Taylor publishes The Principles of Scientific Management 0 cit. Frederick Taylor set out a system for studying and timing work to raise output. His scientific management reshaped factory labor and drew criticism for treating workers as machines. economy / society ●●●●

1911 Official secrecy: the classification of state knowledge 0 cit. Britain's Official Secrets Act and its imitators give the state the power to classify information and punish its disclosure. Control of secret knowledge, what the public may and may not know, became a defining tool of the modern security state. pillar / politics / society ●●●

14 December 1911 Amundsen wins the race to the South Pole 0 cit. Roald Amundsen's Norwegian team becomes the first to reach the geographic South Pole, beating the British party of Robert Scott. It was the climax of the Heroic Age of Antarctic exploration. exploration / society ●●●●

c. 1911 Victoria Nyanza Lodge consecrated in Entebbe, Uganda 0 cit. Victoria Nyanza Lodge No. 3492 was consecrated at Entebbe in the Uganda Protectorate, extending organized English Freemasonry beyond Kenya's borders into the wider East African territories administered from Nairobi and Mombasa. It became one of the founding lodges of what would later be grouped together as the District Grand Lodge of East Africa. The lodge's founding is documented in the District Grand Lodge's own historical records, though some sources give slightly inconsistent dates for the exact year. society ●

1911 Franklin D. Roosevelt is initiated a Freemason 0 cit. Franklin D. Roosevelt was initiated into Holland Lodge No. 8 in New York City in 1911. He remained a Mason throughout his political career, and his membership is documented in lodge and Masonic biographical records. politics / society ●●

25 March 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist fire spurs labor reform 0 cit. A fire at a garment factory killed 146 workers, most of them young immigrant women trapped behind locked doors. The disaster fueled the women-led labor movement and led to new workplace safety laws. economy / society ●●

1911 Carnegie's fortune becomes a philanthropic engine 0 cit. Andrew Carnegie creates the Carnegie Corporation of New York, adding to earlier bodies like the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His giving built libraries, funded research and pushed an agenda for international order. Like Rockefeller, he showed how a single industrial fortune could steer public life for generations. culture / economy / society ●●

1911 The Second Maasai Move and the Maasai Case 2 cit. A second agreement in 1911 forced the northern Maasai off the Laikipia plateau, which settlers coveted, and crowded them into an enlarged southern reserve. Some Maasai leaders challenged the move in court in 1912 to 1913, arguing the treaty had been broken, but the case was thrown out on the ground that a dispute between the Crown and its protected subjects was not one the courts could hear. The move stripped the Maasai of about half their remaining land and remains a live grievance. diplomacy / politics / society ●●●

1911 The second Maasai Agreement clears Laikipia for ranches 0 cit. A second Anglo-Maasai Agreement removes the northern Maasai from Laikipia and moves them to an enlarged southern reserve. The plateau is thrown open to European ranching, and its Maasai occupants never regain the land. This forced move is the origin of the large private holdings that still dominate Laikipia. politics / society ●●●

1911 Rotary adopts the motto Service Above Self 0 cit. At its Portland convention Rotary embraced two guiding phrases, later summed up as Service Above Self and He Profits Most Who Serves Best. The idea tied membership to volunteer service rather than only to business contacts. Service Above Self was later declared the principal motto of Rotary. society ●●

1911 Nairobi builds fingerprints, CID and criminal intelligence files 2 cit. Police training in Nairobi was paired with a fingerprint section in 1911, then a Criminal Intelligence Unit in 1926 to record criminals, undesirable persons and suspicious persons. This is where the Scotland Yard side of the inheritance matters: detective bureaucracy, fingerprints, files and political intelligence were built into the colonial police before independence. politics / society / technology ●●●

17 July 1912 Founding of World Athletics 0 cit. no story National federations meeting after the Stockholm Olympics found the International Amateur Athletic Federation to govern track and field and ratify world records. It is now known as World Athletics. culture / diplomacy / society ●●

March 1912 Scott's party dies returning from the Pole 0 cit. Robert Falcon Scott and his companions reach the South Pole a month after Amundsen, then perish on the march home. Their diaries, found with their bodies, made them tragic heroes of empire. exploration / society ●●●

1912 The Native Authority Ordinance Empowers the Chiefs 2 cit. Building on the Village Headman Ordinance of 1902, the Native Authority Ordinance of 1912 gave the appointed chiefs and headmen legal power to issue binding orders, compel labour, and collect taxes, backed by the colonial courts and police. It turned the invented office of government chief into a formal instrument of colonial rule. These men, dependent on the state for their authority, became the first collaborator class that enforced tax, labour, and colonial law on their own people. politics / society ●●●

1912 Colonial banning of the Nyabingi cult 0 cit. After years of Nyabingi-led resistance, the British used witchcraft legislation to outlaw the cult and prosecute its mediums. Labeling the movement witchcraft let the state treat a religious network as simple crime and criminalize belief in the spirit itself. The Nyabingi name later traveled far and is often cited as one root of the word Rastafari, though that link is debated. politics / religion / society ●●

c. 1912 Nubi soldiers settled at Kibera 6 cit. The Kenyan Nubians descend from Sudanese soldiers, the Nubi, who served the British in the King's African Rifles. From around 1912 the colonial government allotted them land on the edge of Nairobi as a military settlement, in a forested area they called Kibra, meaning bush or forest. Brought to Kenya as servants of empire, they were left as a community with no clear home of their own. politics / society ●●

4 March 1913 Founding of the Department of Labor 0 cit. On his last day in office, President Taft signs the act splitting Commerce and Labor and creating a separate Department of Labor to promote the welfare of wage earners. It later administers labor statistics, workplace standards, and unemployment programs. economy / society ●●●

14 May 1913 Rockefeller Foundation is chartered 0 cit. The Rockefeller Foundation was chartered in New York in May 1913 to promote the well-being of people worldwide. It became one of the most influential philanthropic bodies of the twentieth century. science / society ●●●●

31 May 1913 Mombasa Lodge consecrated 0 cit. Mombasa Lodge No. 3645 was consecrated on 31 May 1913 under the English constitution, giving the coastal port its own Masonic lodge distinct from the earlier Nairobi and Zanzibar foundations. Mombasa's role as the colony's main port and a mixed British, Arab, and Indian trading town gave its lodge a somewhat different membership base than the upcountry railway and settler lodges. A Freemasons' Hall was later built in Mombasa to house the lodge. economy / society ●●

1913 Averell Harriman is tapped for Skull and Bones 0 cit. Averell Harriman, later a US ambassador and Governor of New York, was tapped into Skull and Bones in 1913. This is documented in Yale and Skull and Bones membership records. politics / society ●●

c. 1 January 1913 Sterilization Laws Spread Across the States 0 cit. Following Indiana and California, states including New Jersey, Iowa, New York, North Dakota, Michigan, Kansas, Wisconsin, Nebraska, and Oregon passed compulsory sterilization laws in the years before World War I. By the 1930s, roughly thirty states had enacted eugenic sterilization statutes, backed by the American Eugenics Society and state boards of health. politics / science / society ●●

4 June 1913 Emily Davison killed at the Epsom Derby 0 cit. Suffragette Emily Davison ran onto the racecourse and was struck by the King's horse, dying of her injuries days later. Whether she meant to sacrifice her life is still debated, but her death became a rallying symbol for the vote. politics / society ●●

1913 The Congo Reform Association declares victory and closes 0 cit. Judging that Belgian reforms had ended the worst of the forced-labor system, the Congo Reform Association wound up its work. Morel went on to other causes, and Casement was later executed by Britain for his role in the Irish independence struggle, a turn that complicated his memory. The association left a model for later international human rights campaigns, even as colonial rule in the Congo continued. politics / society ●●

1913 to 1914 Mekatilili wa Menza and the Giriama uprising 0 cit. The Giriama woman leader Mekatilili wa Menza rallied resistance to British demands for labor and taxes by invoking Mijikenda tradition, the sacred kaya forest shrine, and binding oaths. She drew authority from custom and the ancestors rather than from any colonial office. The British deported her and attacked the kaya, but she became a lasting symbol of coastal Kenyan resistance. politics / religion / society ●●

c. 1913 The Mumbo cult in western Kenya 5 cit. The Mumbo cult, traced in oral tradition to a Luo man named Onyango Dunde who said a serpent deity rose from Lake Victoria and spoke to him, promised that Europeans and their religion would vanish. It rejected Christianity, taxes, and colonial authority and spread among Luo and Gusii communities. The colonial government treated it as subversive and moved repeatedly to suppress it. politics / religion / society ●●

1913 to 1915 William Wade Harris and the Harrist revival 0 cit. The Liberian Grebo prophet William Wade Harris walked through the Ivory Coast and Gold Coast preaching, baptizing, and calling people to burn their traditional charms, and tens of thousands converted in one of West Africa's largest mass movements. He founded an African-led Christianity outside missionary control. Wary of his influence, the French authorities expelled him back to Liberia in 1915. politics / religion / society ●●

1913 The Mombasa Lodge is consecrated 0 cit. A Masonic lodge was consecrated at the coastal port of Mombasa in 1913, giving the colony's oldest town its own branch of the fraternity. Its members were administrators, merchants, and professionals of the port. Like the Nairobi lodges, it was a private club of the colonial elite and had no connection to the mission churches. society ●

1913 Lancaster House, a Crown mansion in St James's 0 cit. Lancaster House is a grand mansion beside St James's Palace in London, built from the 1820s and known earlier as York House and then Stafford House. In 1913 the soap magnate Sir William Lever bought it, renamed it, and gave it to the nation. From then on the government used it for official hospitality, state receptions, and diplomatic meetings. politics / society ●●●

1913 The Giriama rise under Mekatilili and are crushed 0 cit. The Giriama leader Mekatilili wa Menza rallied her people against British demands for taxes, forced labour, and porters, administering unifying oaths and invoking the authority of the sacred kaya elders. In her famous confrontation with the officer Arthur Champion she used the fowl and feather challenge to defy British power. The British crushed the 1913-14 rising, burned the sacred Kaya Fungo, killed scores, fined the Giriama, and deported Mekatilili to distant Gusii country, from which she is said to have walked home. politics / religion / society / war ●●●

20 April 1914 Ludlow Massacre 0 cit. On 20 April 1914 Colorado National Guard troops and camp guards attacked a tent colony of striking coal miners and their families at Ludlow, killing about two dozen people including children. The mine was controlled by the Rockefeller-owned Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, and the deaths drew national outrage. politics / society ●●●●

1914 First Le Droit Humain lodge founded in Durban 0 cit. The first South African lodge of Le Droit Humain, the international mixed-gender Masonic order founded in France in 1893, was established in Durban in 1914, adding a distinct co-Masonic strand alongside the male-only Cape, English, Scottish, and Dutch-constitution lodges. society ●

c. 1914 Borders that ignored African nations 0 cit. By the eve of the First World War the map of Africa was almost fully partitioned along lines drawn for European convenience. These borders lumped rival groups into single colonies and split others across several. The unresolved tensions they created would fuel civil wars and disputes long after the colonizers left. politics / society ●●

August 1914 Marcus Garvey founds the UNIA in Jamaica 0 cit. Marcus Garvey founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association, which after he moved to the United States grew into the largest mass Black movement of its era. It preached racial pride, economic self-reliance, and a redemption of Africa often summed up as Back to Africa. Garvey remains a contested figure: admirers hail his mass appeal, while critics point to his 1922 meeting with the Ku Klux Klan and his 1923 conviction for mail fraud tied to the Black Star Line. economy / politics / society ●●●

8 February 1915 The Birth of a Nation and film as mass persuasion 0 cit. D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation, released in 1915, was a technical landmark that also spread a racist account of Reconstruction and helped revive the Ku Klux Klan. It showed film's power to shape public attitudes on a national scale. culture / society ●●●

November 1915 The Second Ku Klux Klan Revival 0 cit. A revived Ku Klux Klan was launched, expanding its targets to include Catholics, Jews, and immigrants alongside Black Americans. This second Klan grew into a mass movement in the 1920s before collapsing. politics / society ●●●

c. 1915 to c. 1920 Rise of Service Clubs 0 cit. Groups such as Kiwanis and Lions Clubs joined Rotary in building networks of business people organized around charity and civic projects. They spread the service club model across many countries. economy / society ●

1915 AMORC founded by H. Spencer Lewis 0 cit. Harvey Spencer Lewis founded the Ancient Mystical Order Rosae Crucis, known as AMORC, in 1915 as a mail-order teaching order presenting Rosicrucian lessons to a broad membership. It grew into one of the largest modern Rosicrucian bodies, later centered in San Jose, California. religion / society ●●●

18 October 1915 The House of the Temple opens as Scottish Rite headquarters 0 cit. The Scottish Rite's Southern Jurisdiction dedicated its monumental headquarters on 16th Street in Washington, modeled on an ancient tomb. It is a documented and public Masonic building, not a hidden one. culture / society ●

1915 Shackleton's Endurance and the great escape 0 cit. Ernest Shackleton's ship Endurance is crushed by pack ice, stranding his crew, yet through an epic open-boat voyage and mountain crossing he brings every man home alive. It became the greatest survival story of the age of exploration. exploration / society ●●●

1915 Founding of AMORC, the Ancient Mystical Order Rosae Crucis 0 cit. Harvey Spencer Lewis founded AMORC in the United States as a mail-order fraternal and mystical teaching organization using Rosicrucian symbolism. It is a well-documented modern organization that still operates today, offering correspondence courses in esoteric philosophy, though its claim of unbroken descent from the 17th-century Rosicrucians is not historically verifiable. religion / society ●

c. August 1915 La Matanza: the Hour of Blood 0 cit. Between roughly August 1915 and 1919, Texas Rangers, local law officers, and vigilante posses killed a large number of ethnic Mexicans in South Texas, in a campaign later called La Matanza ("the slaughter") or La Hora de Sangre ("the hour of blood"). The death toll cannot be fixed precisely because many killings went unrecorded and bodies were left in remote brush country; estimates range from a few hundred documented deaths to historian estimates as high as several thousand across the decade, a range cited by scholars including Monica Muñoz Martinez in "The Injustice Never Leaves You" and by Doug Swanson in "Cult of Glory." Contemporary Anglo newspapers in some cases stopped reporting Mexican deaths as routine and unremarkable. politics / society ●●●

c. October 1915 Rangers and vigilantes kill unarmed ranch hands near Ebonal 0 cit. As reprisals for the Plan de San Diego raids continued, Rangers and Anglo vigilante groups summarily killed ethnic Mexican men in South Texas ranch communities, often without any evidence tying the victims to raiding parties. Historian Monica Muñoz Martinez documents such killings as part of a pattern in which suspicion of Mexican ancestry alone could be treated as grounds for execution during this period. politics / society ●●

c. 1 January 1915 Texas Rangers' La Matanza and Anti-Mexican Lynchings 0 cit. Between roughly 1915 and 1919, Texas Rangers, local police, and vigilante mobs killed Mexicans and Mexican Americans in South Texas following the Plan de San Diego uprising, a period historians call La Matanza (the killing). Historians William D. Carrigan and Clive Webb documented hundreds of confirmed lynchings of people of Mexican origin in the US Southwest between 1848 and 1928, while historian Monica Muñoz Martinez estimates the death toll of La Matanza alone in the hundreds to low thousands, noting many killings went unrecorded. This period has its own dedicated timeline elsewhere; it is noted here briefly because it forms the backdrop for the Porvenir massacre and other violence covered in this dataset. politics / society / war ●●●

24 April 1915 to 1917 The Armenian genocide 0 cit. The Ottoman government carried out the systematic deportation and mass killing of its Armenian population, along with Assyrian and Greek communities. Around one to one and a half million Armenians died through massacres, death marches, and starvation. It is documented as genocide by historians and many governments. The modern Turkish state disputes the term and the intent; that position is a denial of an established historical fact, not a competing account of it. politics / society / war ●●●

c. 1915 The kipande registration system 0 cit. The Native Registration Ordinance, enforced from about 1920, required African men to carry a fingerprinted identity pass, the kipande, often in a metal container worn on a cord around the neck. It let employers and police track workers, fix wages, and punish those who left jobs, and it was widely hated as a badge of servitude. Ending the kipande became a rallying cause of early African political protest. politics / society ●●

c. 1915 The Native Reserves Confine the Africans 7 cit. As the highlands passed to settlers, the colonial state confined each African group to demarcated native reserves, a system extended by the Crown Lands Ordinance of 1915 and later the Native Lands Trust Ordinance. The reserves separated Africans from the alienated highlands and grew steadily overcrowded as populations rose within fixed boundaries. Land hunger in the Kikuyu reserves, set against the empty acres of the White Highlands next door, sharpened the sense of dispossession. economy / politics / society ●●●

1915 The Native Registration Ordinance imposes the kipande 0 cit. The Native Registration Ordinance of 1915, enforced from 1919-20, requires every African man over fifteen to be fingerprinted and to carry a registration certificate, the kipande, in a metal container worn around the neck. It recorded his employment and movements, tied him to his employer, and was used to control labour and hunt down deserters. Africans loathed it as a badge of servitude, and its abolition became a central demand of the independence movement. economy / politics / society ●●

c. 1915 Land alienation and the making of a grievance 0 cit. British settlement took much of the fertile Kikuyu highland for European farms, an area that became the White Highlands. Many Kikuyu lost land near Kiambu, Nyeri, and Murang'a and became squatters and laborers on farms that had once been their own. This loss of land, and the tenant status that came with it, created the deep grievance that oathing would later mobilize. The oath gave a scattered, dispossessed population a way to act as one. economy / politics / society ●●

1915 The kipande pass system binds African labour 0 cit. The Native Registration Ordinance required every adult African man to carry a kipande, a fingerprinted registration certificate held in a metal case around the neck, enforced from about 1920. It recorded employment and was used to control movement and hold down wages. The system tied African workers to settler farms and became a lasting grievance. politics / society ●●

c. 1915 Banda walks south to the mines 0 cit. As a young man Banda leaves Nyasaland on foot, travelling hundreds of miles through Southern Rhodesia to the goldfields of the Witwatersrand. He works as a clerk and interpreter around the mines of the Rand for several years. There he saves money and forms the plan to seek an education abroad. economy / society ●

21 January 1915 Kiwanis founded in Detroit 0 cit. Kiwanis was organized in Detroit as a club of business and professional men, at first focused on networking and later on community service. Within a few years it committed to service work and made helping children its central and lasting cause. It grew into an international organization with clubs across North America and beyond. economy / society ●●

1915 South Africa takes over and later imposes apartheid 0 cit. South African troops occupied German South-West Africa during the First World War, and in 1920 the League of Nations placed the territory under South African administration as a mandate. South Africa ruled it as a near-fifth province and, from the 1960s, extended its apartheid laws and homeland system there under the Odendaal plan. The territory's Black majority was governed as subjects with no political voice, on the settler-colonial model South Africa ran at home. politics / society ●●

c. 1915 The ban on raiding dissolves the warrior order 0 cit. Confined to the reserves, the Maasai were forbidden to raid or make war, which stripped the ilmurran of their central purpose. Without raiding to rebuild herds or prove themselves, the moran system lost its military meaning and became mostly ceremonial. The pastoral economy that had depended on mobility and cattle exchange was fenced into a shrinking space. economy / society ●●●

1916 Madison Grant's The Passing of the Great Race 1 cit. Grant's bestseller warned that the "Nordic race" was being swamped by inferior immigrants and called for eugenic controls. Hitler reportedly called it his "bible," and it shaped U.S. immigration law. science / society ●●

16 October 1916 Margaret Sanger opens the first US birth control clinic 1 cit. Margaret Sanger opened the first birth control clinic in the United States in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn in 1916. Police shut it down within days and arrested her, but it marked the start of the organized US birth control movement. science / society ●●●●

c. 1916 Great Migration begins 0 cit. Starting around World War I, millions of Black Southerners began moving to cities in the North, Midwest, and West to escape Jim Crow laws, lynching, and sharecropping poverty, and to take up wartime industrial jobs. The migration continued in waves until about 1970 and reshaped the racial makeup of major American cities. It also produced new patterns of housing segregation and racial tension in Northern cities. economy / society ●●●

c. 1916 The Carrier Corps and the toll of the First World War 0 cit. During the First World War Britain conscripted hundreds of thousands of Africans from the protectorate as porters in the Carrier Corps to supply the campaign against German East Africa. Tens of thousands died of disease, hunger, and exhaustion, with estimates commonly ranging from around 50,000 upward, though records were poorly kept and the true toll is uncertain. The Nairobi district of Kariokor takes its name from the Carrier Corps depot. society / war ●●

2 November 1917 Balfour Declaration addressed to Lord Rothschild 0 cit. British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour sent a letter to Walter, the 2nd Baron Rothschild, stating support for a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine. The letter, meant for the Zionist Federation, became a founding document of the Zionist project. politics / society ●●●●●

1917 The Creel Committee mobilizes mass opinion for war 0 cit. The US Committee on Public Information, under George Creel, orchestrates the first modern state propaganda campaign to swing a whole population behind war. It proved that mass opinion could be engineered, the power at the heart of the media, education, and information pillar. pillar / politics / society ●●●

c. 1917 Prescott Bush is tapped for Skull and Bones 0 cit. Prescott Bush, father and grandfather of two US presidents, was a member of Skull and Bones at Yale, documented in the society's membership rolls; the exact tap year is given here as approximate since public sourcing is less precise than for his son and grandson. politics / society ●●

12 July 1917 Bisbee Deportation 0 cit. A sheriff-organized posse of about 2,000 armed men rounded up roughly 1,300 striking copper miners in Bisbee, Arizona, many of them Mexican, Mexican American, and other immigrant workers who had walked out demanding better pay and safety. The strikers were loaded onto cattle cars without food or water and dumped in the New Mexico desert near Tres Hermanas, more than 170 miles away. No one was ever convicted for the deportation, which was carried out with the cooperation of the mining company Phelps Dodge. economy / society ●●

c. 1 May 1917 Roman Malinovsky Exposed as Okhrana Agent 0 cit. Roman Malinovsky rose to become a leading Bolshevik Duma deputy and a close associate of Lenin while secretly serving as a paid Okhrana informant, reporting on party activities in exchange for money. After the February Revolution, opened Okhrana archives confirmed his double role, and he was later tried and executed by the Bolsheviks in 1918. His case is a documented instance of a state informant occupying a senior position inside the organization he was reporting on. politics / society ●●

20 December 1917 The Cheka is founded 0 cit. Weeks after the Bolshevik seizure of power, Lenin's government created the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission, known as the Cheka, under Felix Dzerzhinsky. It was tasked with fighting counter-revolution and sabotage, and quickly became the instrument of the Red Terror, carrying out arrests and executions without trial. The Cheka established the template for a political police answering to the party rather than the courts. Every later Soviet and Russian security service traces its lineage to it. politics / society ●●

c. 1917 Forced labour and the cotton and mining economy 0 cit. The colonial state imposed compulsory cultivation of crops such as cotton and drafted men to work in mines, on plantations, and on infrastructure. Villagers faced quotas, taxes payable only in labor or cash, and harsh discipline enforced by officials. Forced and coerced labor remained a defining feature of the Belgian Congo well into the twentieth century. economy / society ●●

c. 1917 Compulsory cultivation and forced labour in the Belgian Congo 0 cit. The colonial state imposes compulsory cultivation of crops such as cotton and drafts men to work in mines, on plantations, and on infrastructure. Villagers face quotas, taxes payable only in labour or cash, and harsh discipline enforced by officials. Forced and coerced labour remains a defining feature of the Belgian Congo well into the twentieth century. economy / politics / society ●●●

1917 The great fire and decline of Jewish Salonica 0 cit. A huge fire in 1917 destroyed much of Jewish Salonica, leaving tens of thousands homeless. The city had passed to Greece in 1912, and the new state pressed the Jews to assimilate while many emigrated to France, the United States, and Palestine. The oldest Jewish-majority city in Europe was already shrinking before catastrophe arrived. politics / society ●●

1917 The Rotary Foundation is established 0 cit. Arch C. Klumph, a Rotary president, proposed an endowment to do good in the world, seeded with an initial gift of about twenty-six dollars. The fund was formally named The Rotary Foundation in 1928 and grew into the movement's charitable arm. It later funded scholarships, grants, and large public-health campaigns. economy / society ●●

7 June 1917 Melvin Jones founds Lions Clubs International 0 cit. The insurance man Melvin Jones brought together several independent business clubs to form the Association of Lions Clubs at a meeting in Chicago. He argued that a club should serve its community rather than only advance its members' business interests. Lions grew into one of the largest service organizations in the world, best known for its work on blindness and sight. economy / society ●●

1917 Civitan International organized in Birmingham 0 cit. The physician Courtney Shropshire founded the first Civitan club in Birmingham, Alabama, as a service organization stressing good citizenship and community betterment. The name comes from the Latin for citizen. Civitan later became known for its work with people who have developmental and intellectual disabilities. society ●

c. September 1918 The Red Terror 0 cit. The Bolsheviks launched a campaign of mass arrests and executions against real and suspected enemies, run by the Cheka secret police. It set a pattern of state violence that continued through the Soviet period. politics / society ●●●

6 February 1918 Britain gives some women the vote 0 cit. The Representation of the People Act let women over 30 who met property rules vote for the first time. Full equal voting rights followed in 1928. politics / society ●●

17 August 1918 Founding of the Thule Society 1 cit. The Thule Society was a German occult and nationalist study group centered on Germanic mysticism and antisemitism. It mixed esoteric interests with far-right politics in postwar Bavaria. politics / society ●●

1918 Compulsory schooling reaches every U.S. state 0 cit. By 1918 every U.S. state had a law requiring children to attend school. Universal basic schooling had become a settled expectation across the country. politics / society ●●

c. 1918 Skull and Bones members allegedly rob Geronimo's grave unproven 0 cit. A persistent story holds that Skull and Bones members, including Prescott Bush, stole the skull and bones of Apache leader Geronimo from his grave at Fort Sill and brought them back to the Tomb at Yale. Some contemporary letters referencing a stolen skull have surfaced, but whether it was actually Geronimo's remains has never been proven, and the claim remains contested and unverified. culture / society ●

6 February 1918 Women over 30 win the vote in Britain 0 cit. The Representation of the People Act gives the vote to women over 30 who meet property qualifications, and to all men over 21, after decades of campaigning by suffragists and suffragettes and women's wartime labor. Full equal suffrage with men, at age 21, follows in 1928. politics / society ●●●

28 January 1918 Porvenir massacre 0 cit. Texas Rangers of Company B, along with local ranchers and with U.S. Army cavalry nearby, entered the village of Porvenir, separated fifteen unarmed Mexican and Mexican American men and boys, aged sixteen to seventy-two, from the rest of the community, and shot them on a hill outside town. Investigations by Mexican consular officials and the U.S. Army found no evidence the victims were involved in banditry, contradicting the Rangers' claim of a shootout. No Ranger was criminally convicted; Governor William P. Hobby dismissed five Rangers, reassigned others including the company captain, and Company B was disbanded. Historians, including those cited by the Texas State Historical Association, call it the single most notorious documented killing in Ranger history. politics / society ●●●

c. 1918 The Kikuyu Squatter Crisis 1 cit. Many Kikuyu families lived as resident laborers, or squatters, on settler farms, granted small plots to cultivate and graze livestock in exchange for their labor. A series of Resident Native Labourers Ordinances progressively cut the acreage, grazing rights, and days squatters could work their own plots, squeezing them toward wage dependence. The steady erosion of squatter rights through the 1920s and 1930s produced a landless, embittered population that later formed a base of Mau Mau support. economy / society ●●

1918 to 1921 Civil-war pogroms kill tens of thousands in Ukraine 0 cit. During the Russian Civil War, Jewish communities in Ukraine suffered a wave of pogroms far deadlier than those of the 1880s. Forces on many sides took part, including troops loyal to the Ukrainian leader Symon Petliura, White armies, and peasant bands. Historians estimate the massacres killed tens of thousands of Jews, with some counts running higher, in a foretaste of worse to come. politics / society / war ●●

c. 1918 The Kikuyu Squatters on the Settler Farms 0 cit. Short of land in the reserves, tens of thousands of Kikuyu moved onto European farms as squatters, known as ahoi, giving their labour in return for the right to graze stock and cultivate a plot. For a time it offered land and a living the reserves could not, and squatter families put down roots in the Rift Valley over a generation. When settlers later cut back these rights, the squatters' loss of land and security became a direct road into the Mau Mau movement. economy / society ●●●

c. 1918 The Aladura praying churches in Nigeria 0 cit. The Aladura, meaning 'owners of prayer' in Yoruba, arose around the 1918 influenza pandemic when prayer groups turned to healing and prophecy outside the mission churches. They stressed divine healing, dreams, and visions and rejected both European medicine and traditional charms. Independent and African-led, they built a Christianity on Yoruba terms rather than on those set by the colonial missions. culture / religion / society ●●

c. 1918 The Kikuyu Squatters Move onto the Farms 2 cit. As the reserves filled and land ran short, many Kikuyu moved onto settler farms as squatters, a word that translated the Kikuyu ahoi, tenants living on another's land. In return for their labour they were let farm a patch and graze a few animals, and for a time they built real homes and herds in the Rift Valley. This bargain, land to use in exchange for work, was the foundation of the squatter economy and later the heart of the quarrel over it. economy / society ●●●